Philip Gould, Baron Gould of Brookwood


Philip Gould, Baron Gould of Brookwood was a British political consultant, and former advertising executive, closely linked to the Labour Party.
Appointed by Director of Communications Peter Mandelson, he was strategy and polling adviser to the Labour Party in the general elections of 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2005. Involved in 'modernising' the party's image, Gould was particularly connected with Tony Blair and New Labour.

Early life and education

Gould grew up in Woking, where his father was a headmaster, but failed his 11-plus and went to a secondary modern school. Leaving school with only one O-level, he went on to study at East London College, based in Toynbee Hall, where he gained four A-levels. He subsequently won a place at the University of Sussex in 1971 to study politics, graduating in 1974.
Gould went to the London School of Economics to study for an MSc in the history of political thought, where he was taught by the political scientist Michael Oakeshott. Later he returned to the LSE to teach a course in Modern Campaigning Politics.

Career

After a career in advertising, and with the success of his wife Gail Rebuck, whom he had met at Sussex, Gould founded his own polling and strategy company, Philip Gould Associates, in 1985. Appointed by Mandelson, Gould recruited the Shadow Communications Agency, a team of communication volunteers, who created Labour's unsuccessful 1987 election campaign. This led to his position of influence within the Labour Party under Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair.
Gould was the author of a leaked memo which, in 2000, described the New Labour brand as being contaminated.
On 7 June 2004 he was created a life peer taking the title Baron Gould of Brookwood, of Brookwood in the County of Surrey.
In 2007, he assumed a non-executive director role at Freud Communications, which is the firm of Blair's former diary secretary, Kate Garvey.

Illness

Preceding an interview with Andrew Marr on a Sunday morning BBC TV show, 18 September 2011, it was revealed that his treatment for three-times recurring cancer of the oesophagus had been unsuccessful. After being told by his doctor that he only had three months to live, Gould described himself as being in the "death zone":
Gould then turned his impending death into a campaign as a way of making his departure easier for his wife and daughters as well as helping others by writing and talking about facing up to death. His efforts resulted in an eight–minute film entitled, When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone, a documentary of Gould's final weeks of life that was released on the video–sharing website YouTube before the release of his book by the same name.

Death

Gould died on 6 November 2011 at Royal Marsden Hospital, a specialist cancer treatment hospital in London.
It has been stated that proceeds from his 2012 book, When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone, will go to the National Oesophago–Gastric Cancer Fund and the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. Before he died, Gould stated that he would be cremated and his urn interred at Highgate Cemetery.

Works